tw: slavery; rape; mass suicide; lots of violent death

I have never read something so bleak. I honestly don't know how I could recommend this series to someone, now having read the whole thing, as I truly think the reader should be somewhat prepared before going into something like this.

I'm going to add this snippet from another review that I saw after I finished this book and ran here to see what others thought:

Callender has said of this duology:

"Queen of the Conquered and King of the Rising are about the consequences of refusing to learn from mistakes, refusing to grow and change."


in that light, these books are a great success—they accomplish exactly what they set out to do, but—i would argue—this success is at the expense of the reader, who is left struggling to understand what their investment of time was all for. i can appreciate the mission statement, but it doesn't help me enjoy the ride.

- https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3191004454

That is the best summary of the themes of this story, and exactly why I would struggle to recommend this. Is this book realistic for a story set around a slave revolution? Sure. But it being realistic and setting out to do what it aimed to do doesn't mean I will enjoy it. Especially seeing as the writing and the plot craft-wise didn't make up for that fact. At many times, it was clunky.

I've tried to be as vague as possible but if you are curious about spoilers and what could have possibly led me to say this, here you go:

Spoiler

This is ultimately a story about leaders failing again and again. It shows leaders being power hungry, or in Loren's case, being too "good" for war times. And what's the result? The rebellion fails. All of the characters we follow, die. Many in battle but most of them by mass suicide because they know their oppressors are coming and will kill them anyway. Our main character from the first book ends up betraying all of them, having absolutely zero growth, and uses this as a rise to power for herself to keep oppressing her own people. And our main character of this book also shows very little growth. I guess he does learn by the end but for what because - you guessed it - HE ALSO DIES! The book ends with him being beheaded and the Fjern enslaving any of the islanders who didn't fight and everything returning to as it was. It is so bleak. The only "hope" you as the reader get is that maybe, sometime but not in the lifetime of any of these characters, the islanders will eventually rise up and win. But no one knows how or when. So all of the stuff about Loren being chosen by the island spirits? Apparently that wasn't true. They all fail. And while that is realistic for a story like this, I'm not sure many people would want to invest time in a series knowing that.